


Sunrise Souls

by Lady_Vibeke



Series: "Easy, there, little one." [ a Boba Fett/Koska Reeves stories collection ] [5]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Axe Woves is a Good Chap™, F/M, Falling In Love, Friendship, Getting to Know Each Other, Healing, Idiots in Love, Injury, Injury Recovery, Light Angst, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-22 09:27:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30036546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Vibeke/pseuds/Lady_Vibeke
Summary: The suns went down hours ago and the room in dimly lit by the bluish glow coming from the bacta tank. Boba places a hand on it and sighs. Still no sign of any improvement.He has her armour in his room. It took him days to scrub off all the dried blood; the dents and scratches from the explosion are taking much longer. The paint is a mess, too. If it hadn't been for this armour, Koska would be dead.“Come on, kid,” he murmurs, “I know you want to get out of here.”He can't bear the sight of her behind this wall, but he refuses to give up on her. He remembers when they first met, the fire in her eyes when she hissed on his face, trying to provoke him.'You'll be talking through the window of a bacta tank.'He bets this wasn't what she had in mind.[ Boba Fett takes care of Koska Reeves while she recovers from a bad injury. Things don't really go as planned. ]
Relationships: Boba Fett & Axe Woves, Boba Fett & Fennec Shand, Boba Fett/Koska Reeves, Din Djarin/Cara Dune, Koska Reeves & Axe Woves
Series: "Easy, there, little one." [ a Boba Fett/Koska Reeves stories collection ] [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2108340
Comments: 16
Kudos: 37





	1. Sleeping Beauty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Name1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Name1/gifts).



> Dedicated to Name1 because she's a little shit and doesn't deserve anything, but reading her stories makes me want to write stuff, so there's that. 😐

He will never be able erase the image of the fragile doll-like body dressed in blood laying limp in Djarin's arms. He knows it will be there every time he closes his eyes, seared into his mind like the darkest of his nightmares—forever, he fears.

 _'She's gone,'_ he thinks in horror, feeling nauseous as he stares at Koska's dreadfully pale face through the streaks of blood and dirt that make her nearly unrecognisable.

“We didn't know where else to take her,” Dune says with a voice so strained Boba can't help glancing at her in concern. “You saved Fennec, we thought—” She looks awful. They both do, she and her man. And Koska... Koska looks like she might fade away from Djarin's arms any moment.

Boba rushes them in, doesn't ask any questions other than, “What happened?”

“We were taking down Gideon's last die-hards,” Djarin explains as he carries Koska through the palace corridors. “She was in the middle of an explosion.”

“Is she—”

“Not yet,” Cara interjects with a slight quiver in her tone. “She's fighting, but she needs help.”

Boba leads them to the closest room with a bed. Djarin carefully sets Koska down and brushes a quick caress over her hair before straightening up with a sigh. Several parts of Koska's jumpsuit have been cut off, showing stitches and bandages all over over limbs, hurriedly placed but efficient.

“Bo-Katan said she was dead,” Dune says, “so there was no point in trying to save her, but we couldn't— I found a _pulse,_ for kriff's sake! She's just a kid.”

Boba tries to buy Koska some time with blood transfusions while he sends his most trusted men to fetch best medics in the galaxy. The girl's conditions are nothing like Fennec's when he rescued her: Fennec had a hole in her abdomen—nasty but relatively easy to fix; Koska has so much internal damage it takes hours for the medics to tend to her. Boba offers Djarin and Dune a room to clean themselves up and rest while they wait and they accept before he realises it was wrong of him to assume they'd only need _one_ room. It seems his instincts were correct, though: Dune places a blood-stained hand upon the side of Djarin's helmet and whispers something to him, to which he responds with a meek nod, then wraps an arm around her and they turn to Boba to thank him once again before turning their backs to him and disappearing into their room.

Alone in the hallway, Boba shudders at the sudden silence broken by the muffled voices of the medics screaming to each other on the other side of the door. He feels like the planet's gravity has grown three times stronger. Koska Reeves is a feisty young woman, insufferably cheeky and confident, and Boba will be dead before he admits it, but he admires her spunk. Someone so young and so brave, so full of life, not only deserves to live, she also deserves someone to fight for her life. Thank the gods Djarin and Dune were there for her.

It's the dead of the night when one of the medics finally emerges from the room and announces Koska made it through the surgery. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean she's out of danger.

“She's going to need a long bacta therapy. Provided she ever wakes up from this coma, it will take her months to recover.”

Boba doesn't care about any of that. He'll do anything in his power to help this young warrior. He pays the medics and orders the immediate installation of a bacta tank in one of the best rooms he has. In a matter of a few hours, Koska is relocated in a cocoon of transparisteel and bacta, her hair floating around her like a dark halo. There are purple bruises under her eyes and scattered all over her body. She doesn't look like someone who's alive, but the monitors attached to her show a slow, feeble heartbeat.

“We didn't mean to cause you any trouble,” Dune apologises, tearing her eyes from Koska's dreadful sight. “We were in the sector and this was the safest place we could think of.”

“Don't even say that,” Boba cuts her off at once, “I would have done the same. I will make sure she gets every cure she needs.”

“We can cover the costs—”

“Don't worry about that. I have more money than I can spend.”

It's true: he could have lived carefree for the rest of his life only with his cut of Gideon's bounty, even without the thousands of credits flowing in since he took over Fortuna's empire. He wouldn't do this for anyone, but Koska Reeves impressed him in a not entirely unpleasant way and such a fierce spirit can't be let slip away like that.

Djarin and Dune leave the morning after, looking exhausted but hopeful.

“Thank you again for everything.”

Boba nods.

“I will keep you updated.”

  
  


*

  
  


The staff of the palace call her Sleeping Beauty.

She's locked like a treasure in her shiny case, floating in the bacta that has been healing her wounds for weeks. The cuts, the burns, and the bruises have almost vanished, by now, some completely, some just faded to pale scars. Boba has them all mapped in his mind, every spot and every shape, and breaks into an inner smile every time he finds one of them gone. Not all of them will disappear, but her body is responding well to the treatments and maybe she won't need the bacta for much longer.

Something about this girl makes the beskar walls around Boba's soul shake like blades of grass in the wind. He only visited her once a day, at first, walking in just to check her vitals and leave. He can't remember when he started lingering, when he started talking to her. He just knows he doesn't want her to be alone.

It's late, now. The suns went down hours ago and the room is dimly lit by the bluish glow coming from the bacta tank. Boba places a hand on it and sighs. Still no sign of any improvement.

He has her armour in his room. It took him days to scrub off all the dried blood; the dents and scratches from the explosion are taking much longer. The paint is a mess, too. If it hadn't been for this armour, Koska would be dead.

“Come on, kid,” he murmurs, “I know you want to get out of here.”

He can't bear the sight of her behind this wall, but he refuses to give up on her. He remembers when they first met, the fire in her eyes when she hissed on his face, trying to provoke him.

_'You'll be talking through the window of a bacta tank.'_

He bets this wasn't what she had in mind.

The electricity he felt between their bodies when they stood so close to each other is something he still hasn't been able to process. They way they fought, the perfect synch in their movements that prevented them from overpowering the other and eventually lead them to a heated draw... he's never stopped wondering how that would have ended up if they hadn't been interrupted.

“You better wake up soon,” he tells her through the transparisteel, “You owe me a rematch.”

“You realise she can't hear you in there, right?”

He turns to find Fennec leaning against the door frame with her arms crossed and a knowing smirk gleaming in her eyes, which he doesn't deem worth his acknowledgement.

“Someone's got to treat her like she's going to make it.”

“She will.” Fennec walks in, following Boba's gaze to Koska's face. “She's too tough to die.”

“And too stubborn,” he grins despite himself.

Fennec hums pensively while she circles around him and the tank. After a minute, she says, “You didn't show up at dinner.”

He scoffs. Dinner wasn't even close to his most pressing concerns.

“I forgot.”

“Again.” Fennec deadpans. A ghost of her smirk still lingers at the corners of her lips. “You're starting to act like a lovelorn schoolboy.”

He doesn't dignify her with an answer. He's not going to stop coming here to keep Koska company just because Fennec enjoys making up things in her head. He hardly knows this girl, all he wants is a young life to be spared.

  
  


*

  
  


Three weeks later, a small shuttle lands in front of the palace. Boba watches from a window as Mandalorian in a blue armour walks out of it and crosses the main gate. By the time Boba is downstairs, he finds the Mandalorian politely arguing with his guards. He snorts to himself. _Politely._ Who even argues _politely?_

“What is going on here?”

The guards respectfully step aside. The blue Mando removes his helmet, revealing the attractive face of a man who looks like he hasn't slept in days.

“Axe Woves, sir,” the guy introduces himself. “I'm here for Koska.”

Of course he is. Boba gives him a stern look: his armour looks a lot like Koska's; his face is kind, polite, much like his speech. Nobody has ever called Boba _sir_ —not so unironically, anyway.

He moves a step in Woves's direction. The guy doesn't bat a lash. “You can't take her away.”

Woves's jaw clenches. He must be in his early forties—too old for Koska, Boba almost muses, but the thought feels bitter, for some reason.

“I just want to see her,” the man declares. The worry in his eyes seems genuine. Boba, however, is used not to trust people easily. Or at all.

“Did your princess send you?”

“No. I just returned from a mission. I came as soon as I found out.” Woves's lips tighten for a moment. “Please,” he begs, “I need to see her.”

There is no denying such a heartfelt request. With an impatient gesture, Boba dismisses the guards, then grudgingly beckons Woves to follow him across the palace. The dull beeping of the monitors tracking Koska's vitals is the only sound breaking the eerie silence when they enter the room. Woves walks up to the tank like he's physically drawn to it. Boba's hands curl into tight fists when he sees they guy's hand rise to touch the transparisteel but all he feels is sympathy when he hers him mutter, “Dank farrik, Reeves. This shouldn't have happened to you.”

Whoever this man is to Koska, it's obvious he cares very deeply about her. He scrutinises her in silence for long minutes, whispering words in Mando'a from time to time—words whose meaning Boba ignores.

“Our people say there are sunrise souls and sunset souls,” Woves says at some point, his attention still trained on Koska with such melancholy Boba can almost feel his grief. “She's a sunrise soul: if you can wait long enough, you'll see the sun breaking through the dark.”

Boba would laugh at such a sappy metaphor, if he didn't find it so strangely accurate. He saw Koska's smile _once_ and it was enough for him to understand exactly what Woves means: he's seen it—just a glimpse of it—the sun lurking between the thick curtains of Koska's shadows.

“Thank you for being there for her when I couldn't. You saved her life.”

Woves sounds so genuinely grateful Boba almost doesn't have the heart to contradict him. _Almost._

“Djarin and Dune did.” He won't take any credit for something that wasn't his doing. He stood next to Woves before the sorry picture of Koska's seemingly lifeless body. Even unconscious, she was still refusing to surrender—a fighter through and through. "She's a tough one,” he comments with a hue of fondness he cannot explain, “it wasn't her time.”

“It would have been, if it hadn't been for you.”

Boba hates every bit of gratefulness he sees in the man's eyes. He did nothing, least of all for Woves himself.

“Where is her armour?”

“Safe.” Boba's reply is curt and guarded, even though there was so trace of accusation in Woves's question. Something about the agreeable manners of this guy gets on his nerves and he has no idea why.

“Good. I'm confident you'll keep Koska just as safe.” Woves steps back from the tank with one final sorrowful glance at Koska's pale face. He turns to Boba, “If it's alright with you, I'd like to come back.”

“You really care about her.”

“More than I can say.”

It's impossible to say no to such a hearted request, especially since Boba supposes this would probably mean a lot to Koska.

“The door will be open for you.”

“Thank you.” Woves is even smart enough to know better than to offer a handshake. He just nods his gratefulness before taking his leave. “Until next time, sir.”

*

  
  


At night, when his duties are done and the palace falls silent, Boba retires to Koska's room and tells her about the day, about the stupid people he met and the few interesting events worth mentioning. The one reason he does this is because he knows she can't hear him; if she could, he would probably bore her into eternal sleep.

Sometimes he doesn't speak at all. He just sits there are drinks, letting the thoughts flood his mind until he can't tell them apart and it's easier to ignore the pull he feels toward the young woman in the tank. Denial can only go so far: despite himself, he keeps coming back to her for no apparent reason.

“You trying to stare her awake?”

Fennec walks in without bothering to knock, a bottle of liquor in her hand. By the slackness of her bearing, she's already drunk at least half of it.

Boba returns to his baster cleaning. “Can't hurt to try.”

Fennec hums, entering the blue halo radiating off the tank, head titled back to look up at Koska's closed eyes. “Her pretty face doesn't hurt, either, huh?”

“Her pretty face isn't gonna save her life,” he grumbles. “Her strength is.”

“Yeah, beautiful and strong... it's almost unfair.” Fennec takes a sip from her bottle while she saunters toward him. “Such a trivial trap to fall into. But I can't say I don't understand.” She slumps down onto the armrest of the armchair Boba is sitting into and sneers at his lack of a prompt retort.

“You understand nothing.”

“Aw,” Fennec pouts dramatically. She leans with her elbow against back of the armchair and raises her bottle in the tank's direction. “She's charming you just by lying there fighting for her life... that's pretty remarkable.”

Boba wants to tell her she's got it all wrong, but Fennec knows him too well and will know he's lying. Her observation is actually stirring some kind of commotion within him: is that why he can't stop coming back to this room for no other reason than just wanting to _be_ here?

He's still ruminating over it two hours later, when Fennec is gone and the night has grown black outside. Rationally, he knows nothing about this girl: he fought against her and saw her fight others, even heard a lot of praise from Fennec from their operation on Gideon's ship, but it's not enough to explain why he can't stay away from her for a whole day.

He's watching her absently, lost in his musings, when he notices her fingers twitch out of the corner of his eye. He gets up, thinking he might have just imagined it, because Koska is still immobile as he walks to the tank, but then it happens again—just a tremor, but unmistakable.

His heart leaps from the surprise. He opens his mouth to whisper her name but it gets stuck in his throat when her eyes suddenly burst open and she starts fumbling in panic, hitting the transparisteel and tugging at the ventilator on her face.

Before Boba knows what he's doing, he slams the emergency button and the tank snaps open, flooding the floor with bacta. He catches Koska as she falls forward with the flood. She's slimy with bacta and completely limp.

“Easy, kid, easy,” he soothes as he gently removes the oxygen mask. He presses a hand on her chest to hold her down and help her relax. “It's okay, you're safe. Breathe. Breathe.”

It takes Koska a couple of minutes and several deep breaths to find her bearings and finally stop squirming. She blinks up at Boba, slowly squinting him into focus. He fights back a smile at her puzzled frown.

“Where am I?”

“My palace. Safe.”

She makes a funny face at the mention of the palace. Normally, he would expect her to mock him about this, but she's still confused and barely awake. She's shivering despite the warm temperature, so he picks her up and carries her to the small couch on the other side of the room and wraps her up in his own cowl. It's dusty, but it'll have to do, for now. He fetches her some water before she even asks; he knows how parched the throat feels after a long bacta bath.

“What happened?” Koska asks with a voice so thin and croaky it's barely audible.

Boba sits beside her and tries to rub some warmth into her back. “It's a long story.”

“You have a ship to catch or something?” she scoffs, reluctantly leaning into the embrace of his arm, seeking more warmth. Boba grins to himself: weak as she might be, she hasn't lost her nerve.

He tells her what he knows from Djarin and Dune. When she asks why she's here and not with her people he has to tell her what he was trying to avoid, about Bo-Katan's choice to leave her behind. Koska doesn't react, neither with denial, as Boba expected, nor with disappointment. She seems more concerned about her current situation rather than with what brought her here.

In the end, all she has to say is, “Why did you go through all this trouble for me?”

“That's a lot of words for a thank you,” he half laughs, but Koska's expression is dark, almost annoyed.

“I can't pay you back for this.”

Of all the reasons Boba might have done this for, payback wasn't even one of his most remote concerns. Even when he rescued Fennec, it was her choice to pledge her loyalty to him; he would have never demanded that.

“You're alive,” he says dismissively, “that's enough for me.”

The answer seems to annoy Koska even futher. Like Boba himself, she must be used to be wary of people's kindness: there is always a prince to pay at the end of the line.

“Why do you even care?”

“Just thought saving your pretty ass would be a fun way to piss you off.”

She must be _really_ weak because she almost gives in to a smile. She glances down at her naked legs covered in goosebumps; she wiggles her toes experimentally, presses her feet against the floor, testing her mobility.

“Am I— is everything intact?”

He can't blame her for being so marvelled: her internal damage was so severe, when Djarin and Dune brought her to him, that even the medics feared she wouldn't be able to make it.

“It is now,” he reassures her. “You'll be as good as new, with a little rehabilitation.”

There is a room ready for her down the hallway. Boba calls the medics to come and check up on her, then leaves her in the care of a couple of his most trusted servants who will help her bathe and get dressed for bed.

As he leaves, he hears Koska's voice behind his back. “I'll find a way to repay you.”

He turns his head, staring at the ground. “Get back to your old self and we're square,” he says, then closes the door behind himself. Beneath his palms he can still feel the warmth of Koska's skin and the soft ripples of her shivers.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, look! This time I started out realistically and made this a 3-chapter thing straight away! No denial about this being a tiny oneshot, can you believe it? 😅
> 
> Most of you guys probably think I quit writing at this point, but I swear I haven't! I'm just working 9.5 hours a day 6 days a week and don't have much time to do what I love, which is writing about idiots in love, be them Soft Idiots or Grumpy Idiots. I'm still here, I promise. There's no way I can stop loving and honouring these people any time soon.
> 
> I'd love to hear what you thought, I really need a virtual embrace in this awful period where work is slowly swallowing my soul. Thank you all for being here! ❤


	2. Glimpses of Sunlight

“So, Sleeping Beauty's awake?”

Fennec's casual tone couldn't be any less casual. Boba shoots an uninterested look toward her without interrupting what he's doing. For weeks he has been trying to put together a new engine for an old, rusty shuttle he found in the palace hangar, but today focusing is unusually hard. Now that Fennec is here, he has no chance but to give up trying at all. He drops the wrench and wipes his hands in his greasy trousers with a sigh as he mentally bids goodbye to his diversion.

“She's weak,” he informs Fennec, “but she's going to be alright.”

“Mmh.” Fennec examines her fingernails as she leans with her hip against the wall. “Are we shipping her back to her people?”

Boba starts gathering his tools in their bag. Their clunking on top of one another fills the hangar and makes Fennec's eyes roll. He can see it, even with his back turned to her.

“I'm not sending her back to the bitch who abandoned her,” he grumbles. “The lovebirds went out of their way to save her, she's not getting out of here until she can do it on her own feet and can fight for herself.”

Even the clangour of the spare parts Boba is kicking in a corner cannot smother Fennec's insufferable, patronising hum. Boba swears the woman spends her free time coming up with new ways to get on his nerves.

“So we've got a broken little puppy we have to nurse back to health?”

“So it seems.”

Fennec's steps are idle as she crosses the space between them. “You know what my father said the first time I brought home an injured bird?” she almost purrs. “He said, _Don't get attached, Fennec: that pretty little thing is going to fly away as soon as you heal its wing.”_

“But you got attached,” Boba guesses without a particular effort of imagination. He has a feeling he knows where this is going and doesn't like it.

“Of course I did. And my sweet little friend who'd been eating out of the palm of my hand flew away and never looked back.”

Boba swallows a grunt. “Heartbreaking.” He tries not to think of the grumpy Owl he took in and is currently resting upstairs with her pretty feathers all ruffled in utter indignation for being so weak and dependent on someone else's help to do anything. She's definitely not eating out of the palm of anyone's hand and Boba is pretty sure she would personally kill anyone who dared to insinuate that. The mere thought makes him chuckle to himself.

Dank farrik. Perhaps Fennec wasn't _entirely_ wrong. And she knows, of course. She leans back against the dusty carcass of a speeder and gives him a defiant look.

“Don't play dumb with me. You've spent more time talking to Koska through that tank than you ever spent talking to me.”

He scoffs. “Because you never listen.”

“Neither do you.” Fennec smugly tilts her head to one side. “I don't remember you pining at _my_ bedside when you rescued me.”

“You don't remember me replacing your guts with cybertech, either,” he argues, “but there you are.” He shoots her an eloquent glare before turning on his heel to leave. Fennec's voice follows him out of the hangar: “Take a friendly piece of advice, for once: don't get attached to the pretty little thing.”

  
  


*

  
  


The _pretty little thing_ is doing her best to make it as hard as possible to get attached to her in any way: she keeps ripping the IVs out of her arm and demanding real food against the medics' advice and barks, however feebly, at anyone bold enough to dare to tell her she's too debilitated to eat on her own. She's definitely the least patient patient Boba has ever seen, but her feisty attitude is rather compelling to him, who hides his smirks beneath his helmet whenever a medic or a nurse droid come out of Koska's room cursing her for her maddening stubbornness.

It's a good sign, Boba thinks. If she's strong enough to put up a fight for things as trivial as what she's having for lunch, he's confident she'll be able to fully recover, little by little.

“Enjoying the show?” she snaps at him one day after he brought her soup. He's actually here to make sure she taker her medicines, since he's the only one more stubborn than she is.

She's having her soup through a straw because the joint of her left arm is still healing and bringing a spoon to her mouth is impossible, at the moment. She didn't like the idea of the straw, at first, but it was either that or being fed by someone else, and Boba knew she would settle for the least humiliating option.

“Enjoying you being you again.”

A corner of her mouth curls, bringing a dimple to the surface. She looks even younger like this, with this gown too large for her and her hair falling around her face in a loose mess.

Koska maintains eye contact like she's daring him to mock her as her cheeks hollow to suck in more soup. Boba doesn't open his mouth, too afraid the words that might come out of it won't be the one's she's expecting. She's struggling to hold the bowl into her hands and some of the soup occasionally spills on the towel she has on her lap. Boba can see her barely restrained frustration and considers turning to a couple of unorthodox remedies that could help her get better faster.

“Well, either take a seat or leave,” Koska snorts. “you're creepy just standing there like an idiot.”

Despite her harsh tone, he detects a subtle invitation in her words. She's not looking at him, now, and this only confirms his impression that she doesn't want to be alone. She must be used to sharing her personal space with dozen of her companions, it must be weird to be so isolated all the time, now.

There's a chair with a tray full of fresh bandages in a corner near the bed. Boba moves the tray to the small table where clean towels and clothes are stacked, then flips the chair and straddles it.

“Happy, now?”

Koska watches him, unimpressed. “Take that thing off. You can see my face, I want to see yours.”

Boba hesitates. No one who knew what his face looked like ever wanted to see it, if it could be helped. He guesses he owes this to her, though: she's exposed, it's only fair that he should be, too. He's smiling when he slips the helmet off and sets it on the bed next to Koska; she glances down at it, then at him.

“Now what?” he asks.

Koska shrugs. “Entertain me,” she says before going back to her soup. A silent laugh reverberates through Boba's chest. He can see the small, shit-eating grin tugging at Koska's lips.

“I bet you're not easily entertained,” he pretends to complain. In fact, he might have a few interesting stories to share.

Koska retorts, “Consider yourself challenged.”

Boba will never admit it, especially after Fennec's little lecture, but he likes this girl. More than he should. There are things he never told anyone, but he guesses he can make an exception, for the sake of conversation.

“I almost got eaten alive by loth-wolves, once. That entertaining enough?”

“We'll see,” she says with a shrug. She sinks back into the pile of pillows behind her and brings the straw back to her lips. “Let's hear this.”

So he tells her.

  
  


*

  
  


About three weeks after Koska's awakening, Axe shows up at the palace, dirty and with a few nasty cuts and bruises on his face, as if he just walked out of a mission and couldn't even bother to get himself checked before coming here. Koska is touched: she couldn't wait to see a familiar face again. Being Fett's guest has been strangely pleasant and not remotely as bad as she would have imagined, but Axe is one of her own and his presence makes her feel like she's one step closer to getting back on the field.

“It's good to have you back.”

Axe is sitting by her bed with his helmet on his knees and is staring at it with a look so grave Koska feels like someone just died.

“You can barely look at me,” she mutter with a slight tremor in her voice that could be anger, or maybe fear. She doesn't really know what she's feeling. If Axe feels like she's dead, she might as well be. A crippled Mandalorian is no good to anyone.

Axe finally decides to lift his eyes upon her. He appears tired in a way that has nothing to do with the wounds he's sporting.

“Have you looked into a mirror, recently?” he asks, trying and failing to bring some humour into the conversation. Koska doesn't need a mirror, she's well aware she must look how she feels: pathetic and weak.

“I'm fine,” she lies. “Can we go, now?”

Axe is rude enough to _laugh_ at her poor attempt to toss the sheets aside and stand up. She's so weak she can't even get up. Axe gently pushes her back down with a scolding glare so patronising she would punch him, if she had the energy.

“You're not going anywhere until you're steady on your own feet.”

“I don't wanna owe _him,”_ she protests. She still hasn't been able to come to terms with the fact that Boba kriffing Fett has saved her life and has so gracefully been taking care of her ever since. She still remembers exactly where each of the bruises he left on her used to be when they fought in the cantina on Trask: it's hard to conciliate that insufferable, arrogant man with the guy who sits with her every night and tells her stories about his past adventures across the galaxy. There is nothing she could ever give him in return for all he's doing for her, and this is infuriating. Even more infuriating is knowing he's never going to ask for anything. She's used to showing honour and gratitude by repaying her debts: if she can't pay him back, where does that leave her?

Axe smiles indulgently at her deep frown. “I heard your first meeting was... heated.”

“I kicked his ass,” she scoffs, albeit a part of her wants to admit he kicked hers, too.

“Bo says it was a draw.”

Koska rolls her eyes. She still feels an odd tingle down her spine whenever she thinks back of their flamethrowers pointed against each other in a power balance so perfect only Bo-Katan's intervention could break it.

“He was the one on his knees, though.”

“You always have that effect on people,” Axe laughs. “Don't push yourself, Reeves,” he continues, growing serious. “Your improvements have already exceeded any expectation.”

“ _Whose_ expectation?”

“Everyone's but yours, apparently,” he grins, making her snort. She hates that he's making such an irrefutable point. Axe takes her hand, so small in his, and squeezes it encouragingly. “Try not to be too obnoxious while you're here, okay? These people deserve a little gratitude.”

Koska's head rolls to the other side to stare out of the window. These people _have_ her gratitude; she just doesn't know how to handle the burden of a favour that was never expected to be returned.

  
  


*

  
  


Koska wrinkles her nose at the smell wafting up the steamy bowl Boba just placed into her hands. “What's this?”

“Don't ask. Just eat.”

Understandably, Koska stalls. The aromatic herbs he put in the soup aren't enough to cover the odd smell of it. “Are you feeding me some weird desert creature?” she asks suspiciously.

Boba's lips spread a little. “Just their venom.”

He stopped wearing his helmet around her out of respect and she's been seeking his eyes more and more ever since. Sometimes she observes him like he's a conundrum she can't figure out, sometimes she does it with a quiet wistfulness in her expression he cannot quite place. It makes him wonder what is going on behind those dark irises of hers, what thoughts are brewing deep inside her where he can't reach them. In the beginning it seemed like she felt caged, in here, but recently she appears to be more at ease and less tense all the time, like an animal growing accustomed to a new environment. She's still nowhere close to eating out of the palm of anyone's hand, but at least she won't bite. Not all the time.

Koska stirs the soup and pulls out a couple of chunks of brownish meat to let them fall back into the broth with a lopsided scowl in Boba's direction, “You save me and then try to kill me?”

“It's a small dose.” He takes his usual chair, straddles it as he always does, then nods at the bowl. “Eat. It will boost your cell regeneration.”

Koska casts him one last diffident glance before finally taking a small spoonful to her mouth, slowly but confidently. She chews at the meat with a funny face, swallows, then says, “I'm not gonna ask how you know that.”

Day by day, her bitterness is gradually turning into a sassy attitude that perfectly reflects how much better she's getting. She hardly needs painkillers, now, and can even get up to get into the bath, with a little help. Fennec says she's never met someone so obstinate in her entire life, and Boba is slightly offended: he used to hold the title, once.

“I had to make my way through the desert after crawling out of a sarlacc's mouth,” he says. “I learned more about survival than I would have liked.”

“So those scars...” Koska eloquently scans his marred skin.

“Some of them are souvenirs from the sarlacc. Some are just old things left by years of bounty hunting.”

“You're marked with your own victories.”

A pang of nostalgia stings deep in Boba's chest. “Sounds like something my father would have said.”

Koska is suddenly very interested in her soup. “He must have been a wise man,” she mumbles. She knows everything about Jango Fett, by now—knows how much Boba loved him.

“Where's your family?” he inquires. She never speaks of her parents, only her brothers and sisters in arms.

“My clan is my family,” she answers stiffly.

“No parents?”

Koska puts on a tough, cold face he hasn't seen in a long while. “I've always pulled through on my own, I don't need mommy and daddy to hold my hand.”

This doesn't reveal much except one thing: she grew up alone. Boba might come from a seedy background, but he was the only one of hundreds of thousands to have a father and be loved and looked after. He knows being someone's child is a privilege.

“No one's insinuating you can't fend for yourself.”

“And yet here I am, babied all day long.”

“You don't have to prove anything to anyone, here,” he tells her. He takes her harsh remark as a polite dismissal, so he stands up and pushes the chair back into its corner. “You want to be alone, you'll be left alone. If you don't, just say it.”

He heads to the door, his feet feeling heavier and heavier with every step. He likes keeping her company but won't impose his presence if she doesn't want him around. And then, right when he's about to slip through the hatch, he hears, “I don't.”

He turns around. Koska is staring at him with her lips tight and something like an apology written across her face in thin, shy characters. He lets the hatch close and walks back to her, resuming his usual spot and usual pose.

Koska relaxes. She gives her bowl a stir and collects a couple of chunks of vegetables.

“This soup is disgusting, you know?” she says before stuffing the spoon into her mouth. Her cheeks puff while she chews with gusto despite her previous statement, and Boba feels a warm flutter somewhere around his heart.

“I know.”

  
  


*

Axe's visits become an event Koska looks forward to, but not as desperately as she used to. She stops asking when he's taking her away and he stops pretending the clan is doing fine without her.

“We miss our best pilot,” he confesses after telling her about this job the team he's currently assigned to failed—a job she could have easily carried out with both her hands tied behind her back.

“You might never get her back,” Koska sighs with a hint of guilt. She's getting stronger, but she's slow and her body isn't as fit as it used to. She's not sure her reflexes will be as good as they used to be.

Axe tucks a curl behind her ear. The rest of her hair is braided back in a fashion she wasn't familiar with until Fennec spent an entire rainy afternoon teaching Boba the fine art of braiding using Koska as a model. It was a surprisingly nice afternoon that left a peculiar sense of comfort in Koska which somehow is still lingering, weeks later. Djarin and Dune visited with their green kid, that night, and they all shared a meal in Koska's room. She got out of that night exhausted but strangely happy. Djarin's kid even healed a pain in her spine that had been keeping her from walking for more than a few steps. She tells Axe about this and shares her worry about how long it's taking her to recover.

“You're going to be okay,” he promises her, warm and reassuring as only he can be. “You almost died, cut yourself some slack.”

“It's been months, Axe,” she groans. She conveniently tends to forget it's a miracle she didn't get shattered to pieces by the explosion that put her in this bed.

“Maybe it's going to take years. So what? No one's giving you a deadline.”

It's not the imaginary deadline per se she's concerned about. it's just that the longer she's here, the harder it gets to convince herself she _wants_ to leave. The thing is... she's starting to feel a little too cosy, in her, for her taste. She's never felt this comfortable anywhere else, before. All these attentions she's getting and that used to be asphyxiating now are starting to feel pleasant—Fennec giving her weapons to polish while she combs and braids her hair, Boba bringing her weird concoctions that actually work better than most medicines she's been taking, and his stories about his past—some of which she believes, others to impressive for her to buy them... yet.

These folks' friendship is making her soft.

“I'm useless,” she whines.

Axe seems to realise what she really means. “To Bo-Katan, perhaps. But there's someone, here, who seems to believe you matter for who you are and not what you can do.”

It's such an on point observation she can't even come up with a witty reply to shut Axe up. He's right. He always is.

“What's a Mandalorian who can't fight?”

Axe arches his eyebrows. “Funny question coming from a girl who fought death and won. Allow your body the time it needs to heal, Reeves. You're well taken care of, here.”

“Maybe too much.”

“I think you like it.”

“I don't,” she lies. She doesn't know if it's him she's trying to persuade or herself.

“There's nothing wrong in enjoying someone's company,” Axe tries to reason, but Koska doesn't want to listen to reason. She wants help getting away from a ground that's been begging her to set roots, and it's wrong of her to even consider that: she doesn't belong here.

“Can't you just take me back?” she implores, shuddering at how childish she sounds. She's barely started walking again—baby steps, just from the bed to the other side of the room and back, and it's so draining she wants to cry every time she collapses back on the bed—if she got back to Bo-Katan in this condition, she'd be sneered at. Truth to be told, she isn't even sure she wants to return to Bo-Katan at all. The her people, maybe, but not to the person who turned her back on her when she most needed her.

“You're still healing,” Axe insists. “This is the best place for you to be, right now.”

“This is a debt I can't pay off!” Koska grits through her teeth. If once this would have been a remark driven by spite, it now sounds more like some sort of rueful resignation, even to her own ears. She hates, more than the debt itself, that there is nothing she could ever do for him, if not to pay him back, at least to return the kindness. There is perhaps an undertone of bitterness below the surface of her disappointment, something that has to do with the fact that, deep down, she _wishes_ she had something to offer to him, something he might want from her, something that might make him want to... keep her.

Axe holds his helmet between his hands, licks his lips like he's looking for the right words. “I don't think Fett expects anything in return. I talked to him a few times while you were in that tank. He's a good man.”

“Yeah, I know,” Koska pouts. She doesn't really need a reminder: her brain can hardly stop thinking how much of a good man Boba is.

“You sound pissed,” Axe laughs. He's not wrong: owing somebody your life is... biding. Despite this, Koska suspects the bond she feels toward the guy in question goes beyond a mere gratitude, and this is the scariest part. She has no experience whatsoever with this kind of... _thing._

“I was more dead than alive,” she grumbles under her breath. “He risked wasting an awful lot of money just to—” _—grant me a chance to fight for my life,_ she cannot bring herself to utter. Her voice drops to a brittle whisper, “He didn't give up on me. He said he knew I was too stubborn to die.”

Axe pats her shoulder with a fond, hearty laugh. “You proved him right.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe I finally managed to update! I'm so sorry if I'm so slow, these days, sometimes I just sit in front of an open draft for hours and all I can put down is three lousy lines. Sigh. Today was a good day, though!
> 
> I love these two grumpy idiots with all of my heart, I hope more people are growing interested in this ship. Are you out there, Boksa shippers? Please, let me know!
> 
> Thanks in advance to everyone who will be kind enough to leave a comment and make an exhausted author's day. ❤️


End file.
